Evolution of students Participation in discussions forum in programming course

In Programming course, seven discussion topics were suggested by the students. Results from Programming course records showed that students responded to the discussion boards while studying with Programming course by sending a total number of 115 messages. Assuming that every student in Programming course (26 students) should participate by sending at least one message to each discussion board, this number (115) represents only 58.2% of the predicted total number of messages (182) that should be sent to the discussion boards. In other words, the average number of messages sent by each student throughout Programming course was 4.42, compared with the ideal total of 7.

The total number of messages posted to the discussion boards

Number of students

Total number of messages assumed to be sent

Actual total number of messages sent by students

Percent

26 182 115 58.2%

Some students ignore participation in discussions and some of them have positive attitude toward discussion. The minimum number of messages per student sent to the discussion boards was zero. However, three students posted between seven and nine messages during studying in Programming course.

The minimum and maximum number of messages per student

Number of messages per student

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation26 2 7 4.42 1.65343

2- The number of messages per studentDiscussion topic Number messages %

N=26 Lesson 1 18 69.2 Lesson 2 22 84.6 Lesson 3 13 50 Lesson 4 14 63.8 Lesson 5 19 73.1 Lesson 6 14 63.8Lesson 7 15 57.7Total 115 Mean = 4.4231

Patterns and examples of students’ interactive responses

Patterns Percent Examples of responsesSelf-introduction 45.65% ‘I think […]’.

‘My Point is […]’‘My view is this equation […]’.

Statements that comment on another message

16.87% 'I think Issa has the correct answer […]'.'Of course Hamed, for example […]'.'I Agree with Ali, for example […]'.‘I found the same results as Mohamed […]’.

Responding to the tutor’s views or advice

12.32% ‘Hello Mr […], I'll do that at home because there is no time today’.‘Thank Mr[…], I'll do that work later’

Responding to accept or reject others’ views and opinions without explanation

5.62% 'I think Ali's found the correct answer. My answer is approximately the same as his'.

Responding to accept or reject others’ views and opinions with more explanation

39.43% 'Yes this is correct. A method is a Procedure, it does some work. If the procedure runs when an event occurs, like clicking a button, then it is called event handler'.

Patterns and examples of students’ cognitive and content-related responses Patterns Percent Examples of responsesSolution without explanation

78.43% ‘.Net framework consists of class libraries and common language runtime which are file systems and small supportive programs that help to run all languages (C++, visual basic, C, ………. ext) in the computer. ’.

Solution accompanied with explanation

12.96% ‘The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software technology that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large library of pre-coded solutions to common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the framework.’.

Alternative solution

1% ‘The utilities are applications used mainly by the computer it self to serve the computer i.e. these application doesn't benefit the user immediately but it protect his work, maintain his computer ..etc’.

Patterns Percent Examples of responsesQuestion directly related to the discussion topic

0% - No response

Question for more clarification

0% - No response

Repeating information contained in the course materials

6% ‘Net framework consists of class libraries and common language runtime…’

Repeating information contained in the discussion topic(Cnt_repd)

3% ‘Microsoft .NET is much more than XML Web services’.

Conclusion(Cnt_conc)

0% - No response